No, they are basically not-for-profits, or more precisely in british legal terms, "charities". By taking government funding (directly or indirectly through subsiding enrolment fees?), they have to follow some government rules, and all major ones do it seems: academia.stackexchange.com/questions/49187/in-what-sense-are-uk-universities-public/49188
A similar confusing naming pattern appears to apply to Public school.
In the University of Cambridge for example, all MA degree holders or higher appear to have some voting power: www.cam.ac.uk/about-the-university/how-the-university-and-colleges-work/governance (archive)
This adds an extra layer of difficulty for the average taxpayer to make changes to university policy, e.g. making universities publish all material with Creative Commons licenses. At most, voters could require this indirectly through the government funding requisites. It is a mess.
Not even the Open University seems to be very open!
Ciro Santilli once attended a round table in the early 2020s where a University of Oxford official from the IP licensing department. The University of Oxford took a 20% equity on spin-off companies, not an uncommon University IP ownership policy at the time. At one point, the officer clearly justified this along the following very official sounding lines (paraphrased):
The university is a charity with the goal of promoting education and research. All money obtained is reinvested in furthering education and research.
While noble sounding, this immediately reminded Ciro of instrumental convergence, in the field of AGI philosophy. Or in other words, of course the best approach to maximize education and research outcomes of society is to first take over the world, and then implement those goals from there! See also Why Not Just: Think of AGI Like a Corporation? by Robert Miles (2018)
Notably, the University of Oxford was extremely protective of its learning material at that time, which was highly paywalled behind university logins, presumably with the rationale of having unique learning materials to enroll more paying undergrads. How can giving out free information to all not be the optimal way to "promoting education and research" is very hard to envision.

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Nice, nice place. Natural sciences only, no bullshit.
Not really dedicated to open source course material, nor to free courses...
The "Open" in its name only made sense in the 60's, when it was founded, nowadays, there isn't much about this institution that is very different compared to traditional Oxbridge. "Cheap more online university" would be a more adequate name for it.
A system that would truly live up to the name "Open" in the year 2020 is the one described at the ideal university by Ciro Santilli.
Wikipedia even says that the initial focus was on broadcasting learning material on television and radio, so what happened to that now that we have an even more powerful on-demand tool called Internet!
They even created their own MOOC website, FutureLearn. But www.freecodecamp.org/news/massive-open-online-courses-started-out-completely-free-but-where-are-they-now-1dd1020f59/ mentions:
The course content is still free to access, but it’s only available for the duration of the course, and for two weeks after it ends.
OMG. God why.
A few open sources at: www.open.edu/openlearn/free-courses. The 5-hour course on particle physics says it all. Stated as of 2023 at www.open.ac.uk/about/open-educational-resources/openlearn/free-learning:
The OU provides around 5% of its formal course materials as free open educational content every year on OpenLearn
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pj0rbafFBak What's an Open University Degree Like? by Luke Cutforth (2021) mentions that it is more autodidactic/online, and it encourages part time learning.
youtu.be/rsWwffX-u0A?t=99 Open University - How does it work? by Matt Greg Vlogs (2017) shows that they do have their own custom institutional material. And it is not open???? Please. youtu.be/rsWwffX-u0A?t=222 mentions that there is no entry exam, and you can change your courses at any time, that is good at least.
Israel apparently also created their own version in the 70's inspired by the British one: Open University of Israel. Same story it seems.
Not affiliated to the Open University apparently. But equally unopen which is funny.
Video 1.
Quantum Engineering Technology Labs presentation video (2022)
Source.
Video 1.
The Questioning City by British Pathé (1963)
Source.

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As beautifully put in The Eighth Day of Creation:
For more than a hundred years, the Cavendish Professorship has been the chair of experimental physics in the University of Cambridge. The man in that chair rules the university's research in physics. Indeed, for most of that hundred years the Cavendish Professor was preeminent in British science, with an authority that made him, as it were, the archbishop of physics
Figure 1. Source.

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The courses are highly open, almost everything is given publicly except solutions, many of which are given to teachers only. Well done!
Course materials for each year are stored in URLs of type: www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/2223/, e.g. that was for the academic year of 2022-2023.
The porn version of Crushbridge, died in 2020.
The relatively large Sainsbury's located at 42-45 Sidney St, Cambridge CB2 3HX. Existed in late 2010's and early 2020's Ciro Santilli witnessed.
Being the only relatively large grocery shop in central Cambridge near several colleges, where manu students live, makes this one of the most popular grocery shopping location for many of the students.
The Oxford equivalent has to be the Tesco Express on Magdalen St, Oxford OX1 3AD, but not sure if there's a name for it.
Figure 1. Source.
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